Why ANZUS must go!
On April 11, they attacked a picket line at the main railway station in
Copenhagen so violently that they provoked the first strike at least since the
Second World War by the train drivers, who are legally prohibited from striking.
The train drivers stopped work for an
The following article is taken from the March 27, 1985 issue of Direct hour in protest against the brutality of
Action, the newspaper of the Australian section of the Fourth Inter-
Large numbers of activists were drag-
In the 12 months since 250,000 people marched in anti-nuclear protests ged off by the police. They were quickly across Australia last Palm Sunday, the antinuclear movement has shaken released, but it is likely that the governthe traditional framework of Australian politics. New Zealand's stand ment will bring charges against them and against nuclear warships and the Nuclear Disarmament Party's (NDP)
victimize them the strikes and strong performance in last December's federal elections have led to protests ebb. Workplace activists, includconsiderable questioning of the ANZUS alliance.
stewards, across the country have been fired.
Danish Fourth Internationalists playing an important role
Members of the Danish section of the
Fourth International, the Socialist Workers Party (SAP), have been playing leading roles in the strike in many workplaces, and a number of them have also been fired. The SAP is beginning a campaign to defend them. If the protest movement is demobilized, as appears to be happening, the defense of the large number of become an important task for supporters of democratic and trade union rights in
Denmark and internationally.
The April 12 shop stewards meeting in
Copenhagen was probably the last chance to give new impetus to the strike movement. The SAP supported a motion from shop stewards representing 4,500 workers at a Copenhagen brewery calling for the meeting and representatives of major workplaces in particular to support a call for forming a national strike committee.
The CP shop stewards were the decisive force in defeating it. The real attitude of the CP thus became clear to the workers even though here they agreed to a national shop stewards
April 18, when it can be expected that the momentum of the strikes will have
Also in some workplaces, like the
Aarhus shipyards, there has been a hardon confrontation between CP and revolutionary shop stewards. At Aarhus, the
SAP activists have played a crucial role in keeping the yards out.
In Denmark today, unlike in 1956, there is a new layer of union militants formed by the struggles at the end of the
They have now gone through a powerful political experience.
also a presence of revolutionary activists in the workplace and unions who can begin to crystallize an alternative, even if this strike movement ends in defeat, as now seems likely.
International Viewpoint 22 April 1985
Greg ADAMSON
While it was not the intention of either the NDP or the Lange government to challenge this alliance, the inherent logic of their actions does so. Any move towards a less dangerous, and therefore less aggressive, international policy must inevitably have this effect.
For it is this alliance that directly ties Australia nad New Zealand into the United States nuclear terror network. Because of ANZUS, United States war bases are dotted across the Australian
Supporters of nuclear weapons development have rushed to predict the defeat of New Zealand's stand. example, in the introduction to a "defsupplement in the March 19 Australian Financial Review, Peter Robinson
"Of course, it is inevitable that ultimately New Zealand's Labor Government will be defeated and the succeeding government may well reverse its anti-nuclear policy and embrace port visits, nuclear weapons and all the other costs and benefits of the alliance."
That's not nearly as inevitable as some might like it to be, as Glenda Korporaal, paper's New York correspondent, points out in the same supplement:
"Having made its point against New Zealand loud and clear, the only problem for Washington is the possibility of having its hard line backfire - of New Zealand Prime Minister Lange's becoming the inhero of the disarmament movement and of growing sympathy with his position within other states of the Pacific basin, particularly among the emerging Pacific Nations.
"At this stage, it looks like this is the only factor that would have any chance of modifying the tough stance that Washington has taken in response to the New Zealand ban."
New Zealand's stand did not become an issue because the Lange government went looking for a fight. United States government which brought the ships issue to a head by demanding that NZ admit nuclear-armed warships for the 1985 Sea Eagle exercises.
This was a break with tradition. In both the 1983 and 1984 Sea Eagle exercises, according to the US Pacific Naval Command, no US ship called at a New Zealand port.
But the present United States government has decided that it must go to war in Central America to shore up its declining international position. All over the world, people locked into a permanent cycle of poverty and repression have seen a spark of hope in the course taken by Vietnam - the path of national independ-
In Nicaragua and El Salvador, attempts to take that road have won huge popular
Such developments threaten giant US investments, from South Africa to the Philippines to Brazil. way the US government can see to stop them, is to provide a counter example to Vietnam. It aims to convince the impoverished masses of the Third World, not is another way other than national independence to overcome povand underdevelopment, but that resistance is futile.
To achieve this, and avoid becoming needs the support of other governments - support that the US's European allies, with their own experiences of the futility of trying to hold onto empires, are some-
So, the US is prepared to discipline its
If New Zealand gets away with its stance, Holland or Belgium may be next, not to mention colonial countries in the Pacific and elsewhere.
The Lange government did not set out to challenge the ANZUS alliance, in fact, its stand has contradictory elements.
While advocating what most Labor supporters undoubtedly see as the beginnings of a new direction in international policy, the Lange government maintains that it really upholds the traditional policy - minus nuclear ships in New Zealand ports. Thus the New Zealand deputy prime minister recently predicted very large increases in New Zealand's
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ment responded to the rise of the strike movement with a brutal repression that was a smaller version of the methods Thatcher used against the striking coal the Easter holidays, attacked a demonstration in the city of AUSTRALIA_
"defence" spending.
Since New Zealand is under no military threat, such expenditure can only be designed to prepare the country's armed forces for their traditional role of participating in aggressive actions against other countries in the region.
New Zealand, like Australia, was one of the few countries to provide troops for the US war effort in Vietnam. It presently has troops stationed in Singapore, and has participated in actions such as the Sarawak independence movement at the time of Britain's shotgun marriage of the unwilling partners in the Malaysian federation.
Australia's and New Zealand's tradbeen aggressive policies, that's why any attempt to change those policies, even to maintain the traditional framework while making them non-nuclear, challenges the
To be consistent, the Lange government would need to adopt a non-aligned movements for national independence, present struggle in Kanaky, West Papua, East Timor and the Philip-
Australia, the formation of the Nuclear Disarmament Party was virtually forced on anti-nuclear activists by the media circus that masqueraded as the Labor Party's federal conference last July. In the process of dumping virtually all initiatives towards a more internaional policy from the ALP's platform, the Hawke-Hayden axis laid bare the traditional framework of Australian foreign policy.
It's a policy that opposes struggles for national independence and democracy while tying Australia firmly to the US nuclear war machine. When that was laid out clearly and brutally, hundreds of thousands were outraged, as was shown by the NDP's vote in the federal elections.
The fact is, Australian governments have traditionally lied about their military policies - calling them "defence" rather than war policies is the first lie.
The NDP won thousands of members and hundreds of thousands of votes in a 10 few short weeks, advancing just three end uranium mining; refuse to accept visits by nuclear ships or planes;
get rid of foreign military bases on Australian soil.
It was no accident that the new party every one of the existing parliamentary parties. Party left resented it as a threat. The NDP did represent a threat - the threat fighting for a political principle would break into the parliament-
- an arena dominated by individuals selected mainly for their willingness to bow before the power of the
From the other end of the spectrum, the NDP roused wails that it would leave Australia "defenceless." The fact is that it is Australia that has been in the business of invading defenceless countries such as Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia, not the other way round. The treaty was negotiated during the Korean War (the failed United States attempt to invade China) and signed in 1951.
The treaty was signed for the United States by Secretary of State Dean Ache-
He, and the rest of the US administration at the time knew very well that Australia was under no foreign threat. His single purpose was to build up a series of alliances to guarantee US investments and other interests against any ments for social or political change.
Acheson later boasted in his memoirs that he lied to US Congressional leaders about the Soviet role in Iran and elsewhere to secure their support for the Truman Doctrine. This accepted responsibility for guarding the interests of "free enterprise" worldwide, a responsibility held previously by Britain.
Not surprisingly, this United States outlook involved massive investments in both nuclear and conventional military expenditure.
Today, the United States government has the same aim, but its actions become more frantic as its empire is increasingly threatened. In Central and South America, southern Africa, South-East Asia and elsewhere, United States interests are
In these circumstances, the Reagan administration is involved in an enormous military build up, including the development of further nuclear weapons and of the nuclear-related Star Wars technology.
Absolute and unchallenged military weapons superiority, think the US leaders, would allow free use of US forces in the manner of the 1983 Grenada invasion.
Because of its global corporate interests, the United States needs military bases around the world. cannot be used unless they can be put into position with the agreement of local governments.
The US still has to complete the positioning of the 572 Pershing II and Tomahawk cruise missiles in Europe, because of the opposition of the host countries: West Germany, Britain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.
It is also having increasing difficulty in its military relations with Greece, and in Japan US nuclear-armed ships are allowed in only because the Nakasone government refuses to stand by its own ban on nuclear
If New Zealand successfully against the US on the warships question, it will give hope and confidence to the peoples of the Pacific who continue to suffer from nuclear testing, to the peoples of the Philippines and South Korea, each of which hosts tens of thousands of US soldiers, along with their warships and warplanes. The people of Japan could also be spurred on to demand enforcement of their government's anti-nuclear
Australia could also make an important contribution to world peace by cutting its ties to the US worldwide military network. A first step in this direction is outlined in the demands of the Nuclear Disarmament Party.
A second step would be for Australia to get out of ANZUS, and other military alliances that contribute both to the threat of nuclear war and to continued repression of the peoples of our region.
To fail to do so condemns us to fight in future Vietnam-type conflicts and to continue to contribute to the risk of
International Viewpoint 22 April 1985